Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Animate

Adobe Premiere Pro is a professional tool for editing video. If you use Adobe Animate to design interactive content for websites or mobile devices, you can use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the movies for those projects. Adobe Premiere Pro gives you professional tools for frame-accurate video editing, including tools for optimizing video files for playback on computer screens and mobile devices.

Adobe Animate is a tool for incorporating video footage into presentations for the web and mobile devices. Adobe Animate offers technological and creative benefits that let you fuse video with data, graphics, sound, and interactive control. The FLV and F4V formats let you put video on a web page in a format that almost anyone can view.

You can export FLV and F4V files from Adobe Premiere Pro. You can embed those files into interactive websites or applications for mobile devices with Adobe Animate. Adobe Animate can import sequence markers you add in an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence as cue points. You can use these cue points to trigger events in SWF files on playback.

If you export video files in other standard formats, Adobe Animate can encode your videos within rich media applications. Adobe Animate uses the latest compression technologies to deliver the greatest quality possible at small file sizes.

Moving assets between Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Animate

In Adobe Premiere Pro, you can add Flash cue point markers to a timeline. Flash cue point markers serve as cue points in a rich media application. There are two types of cue point markers: event and navigational cue point markers. You can use navigational cue point markers to navigate to different sections of FLV and F4V files, and to trigger the display of onscreen texts. You can use event cue point markers for triggering action scripts at specified times in FLV and F4V files.

You can export a movie from Adobe Premiere Pro directly into the FLV and F4V formats. You can choose from severalExport Settings presets. These presets balance file sizes against audio and video quality to achieve the bit rate needed for any target audience or device. If you export the movie with an alpha channel, you can use the movie easily used as a layer in a rich media project.

You can import the FLV or F4V file into Adobe Animate. Animate reads sequence markers as navigational or event cue points. In Animate, you can also customize the interface that surrounds your video.

Alternatively, you can use Animate to create animations for use in movies. You can create an animation in Animate. You can export the animation as an FLV or F4V file. Then, you can import the FLV or F4V file into Adobe Premiere Pro for editing. In Adobe Premiere Pro, for example, you could add titles or mix the animation with other video sources.

Working with Animate and After Effects

If you use Adobe® Animate® to create video or animation, you can use After Effects to edit and refine the video. For example, from Animate you can export animations and applications as QuickTime movies or Flash Video (FLV) files. You can then use After Effects to edit and refine the video.

If you use After Effects to edit and composite video, you can then use Animate to publish that video. You can also export an After Effects composition as XFL content for further editing in Animate.

Animate and After Effects use separate terms for some concepts that they share, including the following:

A composition in After Effects is like a movie clip in Animate.

The composition frame in the Composition panel is like the Stage in Animate.

The Project panel in After Effects is like the Library panel in Animate.

Project files in After Effects are like FLA files in Animate.

You render and export a movie from After Effects; you publish a SWF file from Animate CC.

Exporting QuickTime video from Flash

If you create animations or applications with Animate, you can export them as QuickTime movies using the File > Export > Export Movie command in Animate. For an Animate animation, you can optimize the video output for animation. For an Animate application, Animate renders video of the application as it runs, allowing the user to manipulate it. This lets you capture the branches or states of your application that you want to include in the video file.

Rendering and exporting FLV and F4V files from After
Effects

When you render finished video from After Effects, select FLV or F4V as the output format to render and export video that can play in Flash Player. You can then import the FLV or F4V file into Animate and publish it in a SWF file, which can be played by Flash Player.

Importing and publishing video in Flash

When you import an FLV or F4V file into Animate, you can use various techniques, such as scripting or Animate components, to control the visual interface that surrounds your video. For example, you may include playback controls or other graphics. You can also add graphic layers on top of the FLV or F4V file for composite results.

Composite graphics, animation, and video

Animate and After Effects each include many capabilities that allow you to perform complex compositing of video and graphics. Which application you choose to use will depend on your personal preferences and the type of final output you want to create.

Animate is the more web-oriented of the two applications, with its small final file size. Animate also allows for runtime control of animation. After Effects is oriented toward video and film production, provides a wide range of visual effects, and is used to create video files as final output.

Both applications can be used to create original graphics and animation. Both use a timeline and offer scripting capabilities for controlling animation programmatically. After Effects includes a larger set of effects, while the Animate ActionScript® language is the more robust of the two scripting environments.

Both applications allow you to place graphics on separate layers for compositing. These layers can be turned on and off as needed. Both also allow you to apply effects to the contents of individual layers.

In Animate, composites do not affect the video content directly; they affect only the appearance of the video during playback in Flash Player. In contrast, when you composite with imported video in After Effects, the video file you export actually incorporates the composited graphics and effects.

Because all drawing and painting in After Effects is done on layers separate from any imported video, it is always non-destructive. Animate has both destructive and nondestructive drawing modes.

Exporting After Effects content for use in Flash

You can export After Effects content for use in Animate. You can export a SWF file that can be played immediately in Flash Player or used as part of another rich media project. When you export content from After Effects in SWF format, some of the content may be flattened and rasterized in the SWF file.

To edit your After Effects content further in Animate, export a composition as an XFL file. An XFL file is a type of Animate file that stores the same information as a FLA file, but in XML format. When you export a composition from After Effects as XFL for use in Animate, some of the layers and keyframes that you created in After Effects are preserved in the Animate version. When you import the XFL file in Animate, it unpacks the XFL file and adds the assets from the file to your FLA file according to the instructions in the XFL file.

Importing Flash SWF files into After Effects

Animate has a unique set of vector art tools that make it useful for a variety of drawing tasks not possible in After Effects or Adobe® Illustrator®. You can import SWF files into After Effects to composite them with other video or render them as video with additional creative effects. Interactive content and scripted animation are not retained. Animation defined by keyframes is retained.

Each SWF file imported into After Effects is flattened into a single continuously rasterized layer, with its alpha channel preserved. Continuous rasterization means that graphics stay sharp as they are scaled up. This import method allows you to use the root layer or object of your SWF files as a smoothly rendered element in After Effects, allowing the best capabilities of each tool to work together.

Importing Animate FLA files into After Effects

Now, you can import Animate FLA files into After Effects to composite them with a video or render them as video with additional creative effects. After Effects can interact with Animate using the plug-in.

Install Animate CC 19.0 and After Effects 16.0 from the Creative Cloud application.

Launch After Effects CC and create a project.

Go to menu File > Import > File...

Choose sample.fla file and click Import.

Note: Use any AS3 .fla as sample.fla file.

In the Import Preferences dialog, browse to a location where all layer SWFs are generated and click OK.

By default, it takes the saved FLA file location.

Import preferences dialog

If you choose Import Audio option, the audio on main timeline layers in FLA is exported as .mp3 or .wav sound files. This audio is imported in After Effects as a separate layer.

All the layers are imported inside a composition in After Effects. Layer order in composition is similar to the order that is used in Animate CC.

Note:

Advanced layer features such as Layer depth, Camera effects are not supported.

Animate and After Effects workflow

Animate and After Effects workflow

In this video, you will learn how to use the enhanced workflow for Animate and After Effects integration.

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